Susan and David and I were on the dirt bank of a stream and in the still water at our feet was a ahallow square tray like those in which young plants are stored. A couple dozen foot-long fish like trout were packed loosely into the tray. They were lazily swimming in place but were on their backs, bellies up as if they were dead. I wondered what type of trout they were and watched until one turned on its side. Seeing the golden-brown flanks and scattered red spots I concluded that they were brown trout. Next to the tray in the water was a much larger fish, almost three feet long, lying on its side with its head near us. I thought was a salmon because of its silvery color though it was long and lean with greenish blotches on its sides like a pickerel or muskie. Parts of its gills were disintegrating into white threads but the fish seemed healthy and its flesh was firm and strong. David grabbed it in front of the tail and lifted it out of the water. As he held it I was thinking that I would need to dress it out now that he'd caught it, but then I saw that there were bloody marks all along its belly as if it had already been cut open.
A man wearing dark blue clothing appeared on the bank above us. Afraid that he might be a game warden I tried to explain why David was holding the fish. Feeling bad that David might get in trouble, I told the man that I'd asked David to pick the fish up and that he had done so, but the man wasn't a game warden and didn't care that we had the fish. I wasn't sure that the fish was edible so David took a piece of it, perhaps the tongue, to taste. It was whitish and rounded and rather hard so David held it and used his front teeth to scrape something dark like chocolate off its surface.

Susan and I were walking through the countryside, in the winter I think. We passed through a farmyard where I took three pieces of chalk. Two were shaped like a section of aluminum gutter filled up with water, a few inches long and flat on one side. One was white and one was blue or black. The third piece was brown and shaped like a piece of ice frozen in a paper cup. We walked down a gravel road which was icy; for fifty feet or more I was able to slide freely on the dark ice. At a T intersection we turned left onto a paved road. As we walked along I used the longer blue chalk to draw a zigzag line on the pavement. The line looked black in the dim evening light. Suddenly I realized that the chalk that I'd absent-mindedly picked up belonged to the farmer and that he would need it. I told Susan to go ahead while I ran back to return the chalk, then I would catch up to her.
On my way back up the gravel road it was dark and a large farm tractor was coming down the lane, its headlights filling the narrow passage between tall hedgerows. A little afraid the tractor would see me, I found a place to step off the road by a door through the hedge. The tractor passed by without noticing me. Back at the farm it was daytime and summer and the farmer and his wife and adult son were looking for the chalk. I put the white and blue pieces on the top rail of the fence at the entrance to the farm yard and started back down the road, keeping the round brown chalk for myself. Then I realized that I had no use for it and that the farmer did, so I went back to the farm even though that would delay my catching up to Susan. The farmer thanked me for my honesty or integrity in returning the chalk then added, laughing, "But if you hadn't I'd have had to kill you." We both knew he wasn't entirely kidding but I felt good anyway, having done the right thing.
On the way back down the gravel road I slid on the ice again, this time managing to keep sliding all the way down to the paved road, partly along on a line of pale green ice in one track of the lane. I didn't see Susan on the paved road, which ended abruptly at the fenceline of another farm. I saw a track leading off to the right from the end of the road and considered following it. Susan called "I'm over here, P", confirming my guess as to which way she'd gone. She hadn't gone as far on her own as I thought she would have in my absence but she had moved ahead even though the way was unclear. She was on the other side of a barbed wire fence so I found a place to squeeze under it. The bottom strand of wire was pale green and densely barbed but I only got caught in one place and unhooked myself easily. The ground was dusty with blue-green weeds about 8" tall which I didn't quite recognize. We continued until we reached a barn. It was dark out but when Susan opened the door there was a light on inside the barn. We had just stepped inside when my alarm went off.

Dad was probably irritated that morning when he stopped at the bakery, gave me a couple dollars and asked me pick up a couple loaves of bread.
The bakery was a small house little different in size or appearance from its neighbors, like them set back a bit from the street with a rickety picket fence out front enclosing an unkempt yard. There was no sign; people just knew that the blue house with white trim on Alder Lane was Pennel's bakery. The front room was made over into the shop with a yellow counter across from the front door and wooden cooling racks behind it.
I'd been there once before to buy bread with Dad but that time there was nobody else in the shop. We'd just walked up to the counter where Dad had told the girl that he wanted one of the large loaves on the rack. She'd slipped the warm brown loaf into a paper bag and handed it to him. He'd given her a dollar and we walked out together. This morning was different.
It was Saturday morning and we were on our way to Bonne Bay for a family weekend. Mom rode in front with Dad and we kids filled the back seat. We were going to ride a ferry and have lobsters outside on the pier for lunch. I think we were in a hurry; perhaps that was why things had felt a little tense before we left the house. Dad didn't really park the car out front this time; he just stopped in the street. He gave me two dollar bills out of his worn brown wallet and told me to go inside to get the bread. Some kids would have been proud to do something grown up like that but I was a little scared.
I was just a kid, maybe nine years old. The bakery room was full of people, all grown-ups. There were men in blue jeans and t-shirts and women in short-sleeved dresses. Some of them were talking to each other but most were just waiting. I was too small for them to notice me, too small to see past their elbows. Afraid to ask if they were waiting for bread, I just waited too, standing by the door at the back of the crowd, savoring the fragrance of fresh bread wafting through the room. "It'll be just a minute now" announced the girl behind the counter.
Then I heard Dad growl behind me, his voice sharp with irritation. "What are you doing here? I sent you in to get some bread. Give me the money." Before I could explain that we were waiting for the bread to come out, he was pushing forward through the crowd and up to the counter. "Two loaves please", he barked.
"Yes sir", replied the girl at the counter. "But would you like a cinnamon roll too? They're just now coming out."
"No, just the bread", my Dad replied. His voice was nicer though, not harsh the way it often was with us.
I hoped he would get a cinnamon roll but when he turned back towards me holding the two bags of bread, his lips were tight. He didn't look at me, just strode past me and out the door. I followed quickly behind him, my face flushed. It felt like everyone was looking at me. The car was still running out in the street. I made sure to climb in the back seat before he could slide in behind the steering wheel. I didn't want to keep him waiting. As we drove off Dad muttered to himself, but loud enough for all of us to hear "I don't know what's so difficult about buying a couple of loaves of bread."
Mom looked straight ahead. No one said anything. When Dad was upset no one wanted to get his attention; no one wanted to be yelled at. My sister looked at me with sad eyes, like she did whenever Dad was angry at me. Maybe she thought I was a failure too. I just looked out the window and wished that Dad had never asked me to buy bread.

In the dream I am lying on the stage during a play. The setting seems to be like the Jackson town hall where we had school plays when I was in grammar school. I came up to the stage to fix something I think, then the play started and so I lay down on my stomach on the floor with my knee up as if I were sleeping in an attempt to get out of the way or not be seen by the audience. I am wearing my dark blue wedding suit, the one I wore when I was married and in which, as Susan and I used to joke, I will probably be buried. The play consisted of two men, both bearded, dressed in the style of the 19th century photos and standing in a rather cramped library with bookshelves, a desk and file cabinets. One of the men was tall and might've had a name like Larson; the other man was shorter and stockier with a full salt-and-pepper beard. They were debating something, I don't remember what, and they completely ignored me even though the taller man had to walk around me because the stage was narrow and I was in the way. At one point he paused near me and used his toe to close a file cabinet drawer which was partly open, in the manner of someone idly fiddling with something while he talks. The stocky man mostly just listened.
The play ended and a few people clapped. There were quite a few empty seats. When people started standing up I too stood up and walked out into the crowd and sat down in one of the seats, which were small as if made for children. Then Susan came over to me. She had been sitting in the back of the room with some friends. She asked me if I would go over to her friends and explain my situation or perspective to them. Since I didn't know what she had told them about our separation and divorce, I wasn't sure what to say so I asked her what she wanted me to tell them.

I am playing happily with the boys in a mostly empty room with wall-to-wall plush off-white carpet, perhaps like Gibson Hall. The boys are young, maybe under six years old, and I am on my hands and knees with them. I need to urinate, and for some reason I don't want to go out to the bathroom, so I look for a place in the room and I stand up and go in the corner. Then Susan comes in the doorway, and there are two puddles of dark yellow urine in the carpet right in front of her. She steps over the first one and I'm hoping that she won't notice them but then her heel lands in the other puddle. She notices and I'm both ashamed that she stepped into my urine and afraid of how she will react, but the dream ends.